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By Paul Losch
About this blog: I was a "corporate brat" growing up and lived in different parts of the country, ending in Houston, Texas for high school. After attending college at UC Davis, and getting an MBA at Harvard, I embarked on a marketing career, mai...
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About this blog: I was a "corporate brat" growing up and lived in different parts of the country, ending in Houston, Texas for high school. After attending college at UC Davis, and getting an MBA at Harvard, I embarked on a marketing career, mainly in the Bay Area with different companies. My former wife went back to medical school after we had been married a few years, and we moved into married student housing at Stanford, had our two now adult children while she was a medical student, and moved into Palo Alto when she started her Residency. Been here ever since. As my kids were going through the Palo Alto schools, I was actively involved in their activities, most notably head umpire for Palo Alto Little League and 9 years as a member of the Parks and Recreation Commission, among other activities. My kids both are grown, my son teaches 5th grade locally, and my daughter, fluent in Mandarin, is working in China. I sold the business I owned and ran for 8 years in 2012, worked on the Obama campaign, and am consulting for non-profit organizations, which gives me a nice, flexible schedule. Lots of stamps in my passport, and for fun, I like live performances &emdash; theater and music - and of course the Giants!
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How to Sort Out Tragic Events In PA
Uploaded: Oct 20, 2009
There has been another Gunn High School student lost by suicide at the Meadow train tracks. The fourth suicide this year, and it would be five had one of them not been averted.
Just a block away from where I live, a young women appears to have died last week due to relationship problems with her boyfriend, or perhaps someone who wanted to be her boyfriend. It was quite a scene last Thursday evening in my neighborhood. I never have seen so many fire engines and police cars.
Many people are weighing in on reports and blogs about these events. And that is a good thing.
Speaking for myself, I feel very confused and conflicted.
I don't know where the incident on Addison and the arrest of the boyfriend will lead. I can report there was and still is an acrid smell on that block, which means a great deal symbolically as well as empiracally.
I don't know what is going on at the Meadow intersection with Caltrain. I can observe that there have been too many deaths in this year on those tracks, all Gunn or to be Gunn students.
Despite my years (I am 55) age-wise, and living in Palo Alto-wise (20+ years,) I cannot sort out recent tragic events in this town that all have led to loss of life.
Maybe it cannot be explained. Maybe ideas for intervention for depressed high schoolers and unhappy lovers provide useful information, but it is not acted on.
I think most of us don't see it or know what to do with it when we do.
A helpless feeling.
After the fact.
Democracy.
What is it worth to you?
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